Wesley leaves ACFC with title

Chris Mayes is the latest in a long line of stellar
Wolverines defensive linemen.
Wesley athletics photo

For eight of their nine games during the regular season, the
Wesley defenders prepare one way. And that preparation is done
nearly to perfection: They are statistically the best defense in
the country.

But for one game each year, the Wolverines do things
differently. Their regular defense goes on the shelf and all
preconceived notions are set aside when Salisbury’s triple
option takes the field.

“Every time we prepare for Salisbury, it’s a tough,
more tiring practice,” said All-America defensive lineman
Chris Mayes. “Each year is a challenge, no matter what. We
know who we’re going to face when we play
Salisbury.”

Proximity and a football history dating nearly two decades
magnify the intensity of the Wesley-Salisbury matchup. Since the
inception of the Atlantic Central Football Conference, these teams
have met for the Route 13 Rivalry 13 times.

Eerily ominous, isn’t it? Perhaps even moreso considering
this is the final year the conference will be in existence.

If either team saw their luck run out Sunday, it would likely be
Salisbury after No. 3-ranked Wesley connected on a fourth-quarter
touchdown pass to secure a 17-14 victory.

The Wolverines would say luck had little to do with it. After
giving up 124 yards in the first quarter to the Gulls’
powerful running attack, Wesley regained composure.

“We got on the sidelines, kind of settled down, and went
over our assignments,” Wesley coach Mike Drass said of his
team’s response to the first 15 minutes of play. “A
disciplined offense calls for a disciplined defense. Our whole goal
was to settle down and refocus.”

Refocus they did. For the final three periods of play, Salisbury
gained a mere 40 yards, a total well below their season
average.

“I don’t necessarily believe that it’s luck,
but as we played against the option well, we had opportunities that
were made,” said Mayes, a junior and team captain who is
among the nation’s leaders in sacks and tackles for loss.

Mayes, who had four tackles for loss on Saturday, was integral
to setting up a field goal opportunity for Wesley. In the second
quarter, the defensive lineman forced a fumble and scooped up the
ball, returning it to the Gulls’ 46 yards line – a play
Mayes said brimmed with excitement. And it highlighted one of many
instances when Wesley was able to shut down Salisbury after the
big-play first quarter.

“One person messes up, the whole team messes
up,” Mayes said. "Once we became more disciplined in the
second half, their offense couldn’t run the ball.”

Beyond taking his team one step closer to the playoffs, the
Salisbury game meant a lot to Drass. It’s the team’s
last as a member of the ACFC, which debuted in 1998 and is
dissolving at the end of this season. (In 2011, Salisbury and
Frostburg State will go to the Empire 8 while Wesley and Newport
News Apprentice will become independents.) Saturday’s game
also marked yet another Wesley sweep of its opponents.

“It was nice, obviously it being the last game, to bring
that crown back home to Wesley,” he said.

Getting to this point in the season hasn’t been easy for
the Wolverines. Drass said that he’s never fielded a team
that has battled against so many injuries. Out of the lineup are
quarterback Shane McSweeny, All-America tight end Sean McAndrew,
wide receiver Gene Knight and cornerback Dakevis Howard, just to
name a few.

But Drass praises the veterans who have proven themselves to be
leaders. Mayes is not least among that group. For a team that, over
the years, has had the likes of Bryan Robinson and Mike Ward, Drass
said Mayes is right with them in terms of talent and mentality.
Mayes knows that he has big shoes to fill.

“The pressure is always there, and it’s always been
there,” the junior said. “But I usually don’t
succumb to pressure. As a D-lineman, we always just sit down and
talk about how the D-linemen in the past were always great.
… And we just want to move up and be the greatest line we
can be.”

But the team has also relies on a deep arsenal of younger
players who have had breakout years. Two examples are sophomores
Brandon Wright and Askia Jahad, who have shored up the run game.
But it’s Justin Sottilare who has had the biggest impact on
the team in his first year as a regular starter.

Sottilare replaced McSweeny, who went down early in the opening
game against Christopher Newport. Sottilare hasn’t been is a
carbon copy of his predecessor; he doesn’t have mobility
McSweeny had, for instance. But with over 2,000 yards passing so
far this season, he’s learned to manage the offense and has
made himself known through the air.

“He’s a kid who has ice water in his veins. Nothing
ever bothers him,” Drass said of the junior signal-caller.
“He steps off the sideline at Christopher Newport, and you
look at the stats after the game, and it’s 267 yards and
three touchdowns.”

But that’s indicative of the kind of depth and flexibility
the team has shown from the outset -- and which has lasted them
though the wins against teams like Delaware Valley, Capital and
Salisbury.

“The guys who have gotten opportunities have stepped up
and responded well,” Drass said. “If you look at our
team over the years, offensively, we play a pro-style of offense
that adapts to the talent that we have. The offense is going to go
in the direction of the players and their abilities.”

Wesley has just one more game in the regular season, against
Kean in Week 11. Coaches and players will have the bye week to bask
in their success against their fiercest conference rival.

Mayes notes: “The feeling is actually greater this year
because of the changing conferences, so we actually put the mark in
the history books. The last [one], Wesley won it.”

CNU has arisen from its slumber
Christopher Newport’s season looked bleak back in
mid-September, after the Captains dropped their third straight, the
most recent having been against Frostburg State, a team that
hadn’t beaten anyone else before or since. Fast-forward to
Week 9, and we have before us a CNU team that is in a familiar
place at the top of the USA South and holding the tiebreaker over
N.C. Wesleyan, the only other team with a lone conference loss.
Getting here has not been easy, and on Saturday, the Captains had
to fend off a Ferrum squad that was leading going into halftime.
But characteristic over the short history of CNU, the Captains
adjusted at the break and surged with three straight scores --
including a 52-yard touchdown pass to Christian Woelfel-Monsivais
on the first drive of the second half. Proving again why conference
play is so critical, we could see CNU in the postseason despite
their early bumps.

F&M gets a leg up on McDaniel
A 37-yard Chris DeStefano field goal tied up the game between
Franklin and Marshall and McDaniel with just under 4 minutes left
to play. The Diplomats’ kicker then took it a step further,
booting the game-winning score 30 yards with 7 seconds remaining on
the clock. His efforts capped a matchup that saw F&M dominate
McDaniel statistically yet fail to pull ahead until those waning
seconds. Blame it in part on the turnovers. Quarterback John
Harrison had a stellar day of 447 yards, but his
touchdown-to-interception ratio was just 2-4. F&M was able to
pick off a couple of their own thanks to Phil Barbieri, who hauled
in two interceptions while also leading the team with 11 tackles,
eight of them solo.

Running away with the records
Washington and Lee not only clobbered Catholic 49-14, the Generals
racked up a season-best 604 yards of total offense. They set an
ODAC record for rushing yards in a game and in a season, with 496
and 3,008, respectively. They also translate those numbers into
points by notching 33 touchdowns on the ground, which was yet
another conference record. On Saturday, the Generals will host
Hampden-Sydney; both teams are undefeated in conference play. If
W&L wins, they clinch a bid to the postseason. If the Tigers
win, they would have the inside track to the conference’s
automatic qualifier. However, H-SC then meets Randolph-Macon in
Week 11, a team that could push a three-way tie in the conference
if they win out. Then the ODAC’s tie-breaker formula
applies.

Blitz package
Ursinus’ perfect season crumbled under the fleet feet of
Moravian. A 54-yard Matt Johnson-to-Shawn Sylvainus pass play
opened up scoring and led to the 24-17 win. This jumbles the
Centennial Conference race ahead of a few key games in the next two
weeks.

Hampden-Sydney’s win over Guilford on Saturday made this
year’s Tigers senior class the winningest class in school
history with an overall record of 35-5. The previous record was
held by the 1973 football seniors.

Gettysburg had another day of big points and a close call. The
Bullets rallied from a 23-point deficit against Susquehanna to
finish with a 61-50 win at home. Quarterback Kyle Whitmoyer led the
charge with five passing scores. Last week, Gettysburg also had to
rally for a win, but Saturday’s victory marked the first time
since 1994 that the team has won four in a row.

Shenandoah kicker Andrew Lloyd had a school-record 48-yard field
goal to start the Hornets’ comeback in a 24-14 upset of
Averett.

Terrance Dandridge carried a big load in Muhlenberg’s
26-13 win over Dickinson. The rusher put up 191 yards and three
touchdowns.

Maryville got its third win of the season with the help of the
arm of freshman quarterback Dustin Williams, who had three
touchdown passes in the second half to break open a 6-6 tie against
Greensboro at the half. The Scots scored 34 points in the final 24
minutes of the game.

Contact me
I would be happy to hear from anyone who has questions or feedback
regarding the Around the Mid-Atlantic column or Division III
football in general. Please write to me at ryan.tipps@d3sports.com.
I’m sure that I missed some highlights in the region. I
invite you to talk about players and performances on the message
board’s Around the
Mid-Atlantic thread.

For eight of their nine games during the
regular season, the Wesley defenders prepare one way. And that
preparation is done nearly to perfection: They are statistically
the best defense in the country.

But for one game each year, the Wolverines do
things differently. Their regular defense goes on the shelf and all
preconceived notions are set aside when Salisbury’s triple
option takes the field.

“Every time we prepare for Salisbury,
it’s a tough, more tiring practice,” said All-America
defensive lineman Chris Mayes. “Each year is a challenge, no
matter what. We know who we’re going to face when we play
Salisbury.”

Proximity and a football history dating nearly
two decades magnify the intensity of the Wesley-Salisbury matchup.
Since the inception of the Atlantic Central Football Conference,
these teams have met for the Route 13 Rivalry 13 times.

Eerily ominous, isn’t it? Perhaps even
moreso considering this is the final year the conference will be in
existence.

If either team saw their luck run out Sunday,
it would likely be Salisbury after No. 3-ranked Wesley connected on
a fourth-quarter touchdown pass to secure a 17-14 victory.

The Wolverines would say luck had little to do
with it. After giving up 124 yards in the first quarter to the
Gulls’ powerful running attack, Wesley regained
composure.

“We got on the sidelines, kind of
settled down, and went over our assignments,” Wesley coach
Mike Drass said of his team’s response to the first 15
minutes of play. “A disciplined offense calls for a
disciplined defense. Our whole goal was to settle down and
refocus.”

Refocus they did. For the final three periods
of play, Salisbury gained a mere 40 yards, a total well below their
season average.

“I don’t necessarily believe that
it’s luck, but as we played against the option well, we had
opportunities that were made,” said Mayes, a junior and team
captain who is among the nation’s leaders in sacks and
tackles for loss.

Mayes, who had four tackles for loss on
Saturday, was integral to setting up a field goal opportunity for
Wesley. In the second quarter, the defensive lineman forced a
fumble and scooped up the ball, returning it to the Gulls’ 46
yards line – a play Mayes said brimmed with excitement. And
it highlighted one of many instances when Wesley was able to shut
down Salisbury after the big-play first quarter.

“One person messes
up, the whole team messes up,” Mayes said. "Once we became
more disciplined in the second half, their offense couldn’t
run the ball.”

Beyond taking his team one step closer to the
playoffs, the Salisbury game meant a lot to Drass. It’s the
team’s last as a member of the ACFC, which debuted in 1998
and is dissolving at the end of this season. (In 2011, Salisbury
and Frostburg State will go to the Empire 8 while Wesley and
Newport News Apprentice will become independents.) Saturday’s
game also marked yet another Wesley sweep of its opponents.

“It was nice, obviously it being the
last game, to bring that crown back home to Wesley,” he
said.

Getting to this point in the season
hasn’t been easy for the Wolverines. Drass said that
he’s never fielded a team that has battled against so many
injuries. Out of the lineup are quarterback Shane McSweeny,
All-America tight end Sean McAndrew, wide receiver Gene Knight and
cornerback Dakevis Howard, just to name a few.

But Drass praises the veterans who have proven
themselves to be leaders. Mayes is not least among that group. For
a team that, over the years, has had the likes of Bryan Robinson
and Mike Ward, Drass said Mayes is right with them in terms of
talent and mentality. Mayes knows that he has big shoes to
fill.

“The pressure is always there, and
it’s always been there,” the junior said. “But I
usually don’t succumb to pressure. As a D-lineman, we always
just sit down and talk about how the D-linemen in the past were
always great. … And we just want to move up and be the
greatest line we can be.”

But the team has also relies on a deep arsenal
of younger players who have had breakout years. Two examples are
sophomores Brandon Wright and Askia Jahad, who have shored up the
run game. But it’s Justin Sottilare who has had the biggest
impact on the team in his first year as a regular starter.

Sottilare replaced McSweeny, who went down
early in the opening game against Christopher Newport. Sottilare
hasn’t been is a carbon copy of his predecessor; he
doesn’t have mobility McSweeny had, for instance. But with
over 2,000 yards passing so far this season, he’s learned to
manage the offense and has made himself known through the air.

“He’s a kid who has ice water in
his veins. Nothing ever bothers him,” Drass said of the
junior signal-caller. “He steps off the sideline at
Christopher Newport, and you look at the stats after the game, and
it’s 267 yards and three touchdowns.”

But that’s indicative of the kind of
depth and flexibility the team has shown from the outset -- and
which has lasted them though the wins against teams like Delaware
Valley, Capital and Salisbury.

“The guys who have gotten opportunities
have stepped up and responded well,” Drass said. “If
you look at our team over the years, offensively, we play a
pro-style of offense that adapts to the talent that we have. The
offense is going to go in the direction of the players and their
abilities.”

Wesley has just one more game in the regular
season, against Kean in Week 11. Coaches and players will have the
bye week to bask in their success against their fiercest conference
rival.

Mayes notes: “The feeling is actually
greater this year because of the changing conferences, so we
actually put the mark in the history books. The last [one], Wesley
won it.”

CNU has arisen from its
slumber

Christopher Newport’s season looked
bleak back in mid-September, after the Captains dropped their third
straight, the most recent having been against Frostburg State, a
team that hadn’t beaten anyone else before or since.
Fast-forward to Week 9, and we have before us a CNU team that is in
a familiar place at the top of the USA South and holding the
tiebreaker over N.C. Wesleyan, the only other team with a lone
conference loss. Getting here has not been easy, and on Saturday,
the Captains had to fend off a Ferrum squad that was leading going
into halftime. But characteristic over the short history of CNU,
the Captains adjusted at the break and surged with three straight
scores -- including a 52-yard touchdown pass to Christian
Woelfel-Monsivais on the first drive of the second half. Proving
again why conference play is so critical, we could see CNU in the
postseason despite their early bumps.

F&M gets a leg up on
McDaniel

A 37-yard Chris DeStefano field goal tied up
the game between Franklin and Marshall and McDaniel with just under
4 minutes left to play. The Diplomats’ kicker then took it a
step further, booting the game-winning score 30 yards with 7
seconds remaining on the clock. His efforts capped a matchup that
saw F&M dominate McDaniel statistically yet fail to pull ahead
until those waning seconds. Blame it in part on the turnovers.
Quarterback John Harrison had a stellar day of 447 yards, but his
touchdown-to-interception ratio was just 2-4. F&M was able to
pick off a couple of their own thanks to Phil Barbieri, who hauled
in two interceptions while also leading the team with 11 tackles,
eight of them solo.

Running away with the
records

Washington and Lee not only clobbered Catholic
49-14, the Generals racked up a season-best 604 yards of total
offense. They set an ODAC record for rushing yards in a game and in
a season, with 496 and 3,008, respectively. They also translate
those numbers into points by notching 33 touchdowns on the ground,
which was yet another conference record. On Saturday, the Generals
will host Hampden-Sydney; both teams are undefeated in conference
play. If W&L wins, they clinch a bid to the postseason. If the
Tigers win, they would have the inside track to the
conference’s automatic qualifier. However, H-SC then meets
Randolph-Macon in Week 11, a team that could push a three-way tie
in the conference if they win out. Then the ODAC’s
tie-breaker formula applies.

Blitz package

Ursinus’ perfect season crumbled under
the fleet feet of Moravian. A 54-yard Matt Johnson-to-Shawn
Sylvainus pass play opened up scoring and led to the 24-17 win.
This jumbles the Centennial Conference race ahead of a few key
games in the next two weeks.

Hampden-Sydney’s win over Guilford on
Saturday made this year’s Tigers senior class the winningest
class in school history with an overall record of 35-4. The
previous record was held by the 1973 football seniors.

Gettysburg had another day of big points and a
close call. The Bullets rallied from a 23-point deficit against
Susquehanna to finish with a 61-50 win at home. Quarterback Kyle
Whitmoyer led the charge with five passing scores. Last week,
Gettysburg also had to rally for a win, but Saturday’s
victory marked the first time since 1994 that the team has won four
in a row.

Shenandoah kicker Andrew Lloyd had a
school-record 48-yard field goal to start the Hornets’
comeback in a 24-14 upset of Averett.

Terrance Dandridge carried a big load in
Muhlenberg’s 26-13 win over Dickinson. The rusher put up 191
yards and three touchdowns.

Maryville got its third win of the season with
the help of the arm of freshman quarterback Dustin Williams, who
had three touchdown passes in the second half to break open a 6-6
tie against Greensboro at the half. The Scots scored 34 points in
the final 24 minutes of the game.

Contact me

I would be happy to hear from anyone who has
questions or feedback regarding the Around the Mid-Atlantic column
or Division III football in general. Please write to me at ryan.tipps@d3sports.com.
I’m sure that I missed some highlights in the region. I
invite you to talk about players and performances on the message
board’s Around the
Mid-Atlantic thread.

Andrew Lovell is a writer based in Connecticut and a former online news editor for ESPN.com, as well as a former sports staff writer/editor for the New Britain Herald (Conn.). He has written feature stories for ESPN.com, currently contributes fantasy football content to RotoBaller.com, and has been a regular contributor to D3sports.com sites since 2007. Andrew has also written for a number of daily newspapers in New York, including the Poughkeepsie Journal, Ithaca Journal and Auburn Citizen. He graduated from Ithaca College in 2008 with B.A. in Sport Media and a minor in writing.